Last winter an unfavorable article came out about Westview and southwest Atlanta that left us disappointed and angry at the author, Janna Elphinstone, and feeling the need to retaliate with a response article. The other day I visited NBC’s 11Alive website only to find myself disappointed at the news once again – an article wrongly making a stab at southwest Atlanta. In the screen captures you can see the homepage headlines: “Celebrities at Shooting Scene” with the location listed as “Southwest Atlanta”. Of course I was immediately shocked reading those headlines, franticly trying to think where “Club Dream” could be? I clicked on the article link only to notice a discrepancy – the location was listed as “Northeast Atlanta”! Sure enough, I typed in directions of how to get from my house to Club Dream and map told me to head to northeast Atlanta – 15 miles away from my southwest Atlanta home!

I don’t understand where the news gets it. The Westview and southwest Atlanta I know is a wonderful place – a place with beautiful, old historic Arts and Crafts style homes; a place where I greet my neighbors daily; a place where I enjoy dinner parties with neighborhood friends; a place where community members fight for causes like reopening fire stations and creating community gardens. In the meanwhile grocery clerks get shot to death in Roswell, people get tied up and robbed at gunpoint in the Briarcliff area, and 4-hour SWAT team stand-offs happen in Loganville…yet somehow southwest Atlanta remains the one with the stigma? Needless to say I was upset to see 11Alive wrongly accusing the southwest Atlanta area of a club shooting.